Back to work blues? There's a wine for that

The French have a phrase, “la rentrée”, that encompasses not only our own “back to school”, but also the notion of returning to work post Summer holiday.

How, having got back into the workaday routine, can we recapture some of the freewheeling spirit of Summer? Well, in a phrase that I am hoping will catch on, there’s a wine for that.

It’s a well-known phenomenon that the “best wine you’ve ever tasted” amid the azure skies and limpid seas of holiday, will magically turn to dull and ho hum when drunk back in the land of the 9-5 and everyday worries. But here are some wines from holiday destinations, tried and tested in laboratory (well, deepest Surrey) conditions, which can give you a reminder of sunnier days and still work their magic back on home soil.

Barbadillo Solear Manzanilla – on offer at £7.49 a bottle until 20 September at Waitrose

I wrote recently that dry Fino and Manzanilla sherries are one of my favourite summer drinks, so I heartily recommend having a bottle of this in the fridge. Fresh, very dry and with a hint of nuttiness and of ozone-y sea air, this is a wonderful aperitif style. Try it with salted almonds or with gazpacho on a sunny weekend lunch.

Hatzidakis Santorini Assyrtiko - £12.99 from Waitrose

This little piece of Greece from the Island of Santorini is surely the epitome of summer. Assyrtiko is a native Greek variety that reaches its apogee on the arid, volcanic soils of Santorini. Grapefruit acidity combines with a juicy stone fruitiness and a whiff of pumice stone to create a flavourful, refreshing mouthful, with wonderful texture. Anything involving seafood, olive oil and garlic will shine with this.

Cune Barrel Fermented Rioja Blanco 2015 - £10.49 from Waitrose; Tanners have the 2014 for £10.30

We mostly think of Rioja as a red wine-producing region – but a warming, oaky red doesn’t quite strike the sunny note we’re after here. White Rioja is less well known, but it is a great style for easing from Summer to Autumn. The flavours are fresh with yellow/green plum fruit, but also some weight and body, as well as spice from the oak fermentation and ageing. This will stand up well to roast or barbecued chicken.

Whispering Angel 2015 - £15.99 (as part of mixed case of 6 – single bottle £19) from The Wine Reserve, Cobham; £15 (if buying 6 or more – single bottle £16.99) from Taurus Wines, Bramley

Rosé has an almost magical property – it can make any glimpse of sun, no matter how fleeting, feel instantly summery.  Whispering Angel is beautifully pale and delicate, but with lovely, slightly herbal flavour and real persistence. Try it with the last of the summer salads, especially if tomatoes are involved.

Feudo di Santa Tresa Frappato Terre Siciliane IGP 2015  - £9.95 from organic specialists Vintage Roots

A perhaps surprisingly fresh, light and delicate red from Sicily, made from the native Frappato variety. With its light body and cherry fruit yet still food-friendly dryness, it is renowned locally as the perfect red wine for fish, and who am I to disagree? If you get a late summer hot day, it will take well to chilling.

Italy - an embarrassment of riches

If you ask any wine lover which is their favourite wine producing country, they tend to fall into two camps: the Francophiles and the Italophiles.

While I tend to plump for France (and a quick glance through my back catalogue of columns here will confirm this) I can see the case for Italy. The country, and its wines, are an endless source of fascination with a wealth of indigenous grape varieties to draw on and a long history of winemaking. You could spend a lifetime studying the wines of Italy (there are worse fates) and still not exhaust what this goldmine of vines has to offer. But there is also frustration, with lacklustre wines sometimes too much in evidence, a famous name on the label no real guide to quality and a tendency to play fast and loose with wine regulations.

I swear that every time I look at a wine map of Spain, they’ve added a new region I’d never heard of before. Italy manages the same trick with grape varieties – just when you think there can’t possibly be any more to discover, up pops another one – not new, per se, just new to me.

And is it any wonder? Italy is home to 377 indigenous grape varieties, which is more than any other wine producing nation. Much more, in fact, as the second placed country for native varieties is France with just over 200.

This abundance of grape varieties is due partly to the fact that Italy has been at this winemaking lark for a very long time – long enough for new varieties to emerge and evolve. Those ancient Romans might have invented central heating with their fancy-schmancy hypocausts, but when it comes to winemaking, they were just continuing a centuries-old tradition. The Greeks, who were on the scene before the ancient Romans, dubbed the country “oenotria”, or land of the vine, testifying to its already established wine-making credentials. 

Italy makes a lot of wine – it occupies the 2^nd spot after France; both are quite some way ahead of Spain in 3^rd place.  How much wine a year? Each year varies a little, but it’s somewhere over 40 million hectolitres – or about 20 times as much as New Zealand. 

The geography of Italy can be summarised as a range of hills and mountains surrounded by sea – very little of it is flat. The boot of Italy covers many latitudes, combined with the variations in altitude, soil type, exposure and grape varieties, making it one of the most diverse wine producers - perhaps the most diverse – in the world. You can begin to see why it might take years to get to become expert in such a multi-faceted jewel of a country.

In addition, it might not surprise you to know that Italians often employ a creative approach to applying its own, sometimes arcane, wine labelling laws. Labels seem to be either impenetrably over-populated with seemingly meaningless terms; or all attempts to convey something about what’s in the bottle are sacrificed to elegant, minimal label design.

I have memories of visiting the beautiful Amalfi coast south of Naples back in the 1990s. The scenery and the food were stunning – the wines were not. Determined to drink the wines of the region, I struggled to find something that was not utterly undrinkable. The good news is that, since then, there has been a quality revolution in Italy’s wineries. They have always had good raw material to work with, and at the top level the wines have long been high quality, but now they are increasingly rising above a sea of indifferent  dross at the more everyday level.

Recently I was asked to pick six wines to represent Italy, from top to toe. I could probably pick a different six wines every week for a year and still be nowhere near exhausting Italy’s winey riches. However, here is this week’s selection, for what it’s worth.

Prosecco Bellenda Brut 2012 - £14.99 from Caves de Pyrène and independent merchants

A wine trade friend of mine calls Prosecco, Drossecco – and it’s true that too much of it is dull, too sweet and coarse. This one is drier than most (Brut rather than Extra Dry) and comes from a single vintage rather than being a Non Vintage blend.

Greco di Tufo, Benito Ferrara 2012 - £17.90 from Caves de Pyrène

From Campania, scene of my disappointing wine tour of the 1990s, this would have cheered me up no end. It combines a high quality variety (Greco) with volcanic soils to make a wine with bags of character. Not particularly aromatic, but it has layers of flavour, including stone fruit, lovely texture and length.

Gewürztraminer “Joseph” J Hofstätter 2012 -

£13.95 from The Wine Society

Can this really be Italian, with all those Germanic-sounding names? Well it is, just. Alto Adige, in Italy’s far north, is also known as Süd Tirol – it was part of the Austrian Empire until the end of the First World War and the population is predominantly German speaking. This aromatic variety might be associated with Alsace or Germany, but it originates from here, around the village of Traminer. Expect rich, spicy, lychee and Turkish Delight flavours.

Marzemino, Castel Firmian 2012 - £6.95 from The Wine Society

Further down the Adige valley is the Trentino region, whence this wine comes. I love the way Italy can produce some of the most serious and sometimes austere wines (Barolo and Chianti spring to mind) but alongside them is happy to dish up light-hearted, unchallenging and delightfully fruity ones, such as this Marzemino.

Fondo Filara Etna Rosso, Nicosia 2012 - £10.95 from The Wine Society

To say that soils in the Etna region of Sicily are volcanic is something of an understatement. This is a typical Etna blend of Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio and its structure and minerality demand food.

Morellino di Scansano  “Bellamarsilia”, Poggio Argentiera 2012 - £11.81 from Caves

de Pyrène, Majestic has a very similar wine for £11.99

I’m avoiding the elephant in the room that is Chianti, which is too big and complex a region to be summed up in one wine – but this is one is close. From the Tuscan coast, this blend of Sangiovese (the Chianti grape) and the ancient Ciliegiolo has the black cherry and leafy characters of Chianti, but with more roundness and ripeness, making it easy to love and flexible with food.

Getting fresh at the Real Wine Fair

Don’t you just love it when the wine trade gets a bee in its bonnet about what we should call wines?

Guildford’s own Caves de Pyrène are the leading lights in a new wine movement, which has recently held its second annual tasting of what they are calling “real wine”.  Doug Wregg, wine trade poet-philosopher and sometime Sales and Marketing Director (a man further removed from the image of anyone with that job title you could not hope to find) for Caves de Pyrène is the brains behind the operation.

What is a real wine?  Are some of the things we drink, foolishly imagining them to be wine just because that’s what it says on the label, in fact no such thing?  Rest easy, wine drinkers, of course it’s all real wine – just not “real wine”.  

Now I should provide a pithy and concise definition of what constitutes “real wine”.  But of course such a thing doesn’t exist.  These wines tend to be made with minimum intervention in both the vineyard and winery; many are organic and/or biodynamic; usually they are made by small-scale operations; a good number of them would probably also come under the banner of natural wines (another rather nebulous and hard-to-pin-down category).  The winemakers share an interest in producing wines that speak of their origins and which express the growing conditions of the vintage.  The real or natural wine movement is somewhat akin to the slow food movement.

Giusto Occhipinti of COS, a "real wine" maker - and a real winemaker

If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to sum up such wines in a single word, I’d say “What the h*** are you doing with a gun, for God’s sake, it’s only wine.” as I ran from the room.  If I was asked nicely (without the gun) then “authentic” might be a decent stab at it.

Here are some of my own highlights from the second annual Real Wine Fair, held last month in London:

I Vigneri Salvo Foti – Vinujancu Bianco 2011 - £23.16 from Caves de Pyrène

One of the joys of exploring Italian wines is constantly discovering new grape varieties, even as a seasoned grape-spotter.  This Sicilian white is a blend of Minnella (the new one to me, native not just to Sicily but to the Etna region specifically), Grecanico (aka Garganega, another Italian native and most famously associated with Soave) and Riesling (a long way from its German origins).

As you might imagine in the Etna region, the soils that the vines grow in are volcanic – indeed some resemble black granulated pumice, rather than anything you might consider trying to use as a growing medium.  The result is intensely flavoured, characterful wines, helped along by the high altitude (1200m for this wine) and ancient vines.  Salvo adds no sulphur to the wines, but there is no hint of odd or off flavours, just aromas of honey and honeycomb, leading onto a dry, grippy and zippy palate.

COS, Giusto Occhipinti – Cerasuolo di Vittoria 2010 - £16.80 from Caves de Pyrène

Still in Sicily, COS produce a range of wines from indigenous varieties.  Cerasuolo di Vittoria is the island’s only DOCG (ostensible top of the quality tree for Italian wines) and is a blend of two native varieties:  Nero d’Avola and Frappato.

If you were to imagine the style of red wine that comes from such an intensely Mediterranean setting, then I would wager it would be confounded by what you would find here:  nothing is overdone, all is lightness and elegance.  The fruit is delicate, cherryish and fresh, with no oak flavours to tone it down – the wine is fermented in cement tank and aged in large old oak “foudres” (essentially giant barrels).

 

Bodegas Bernabe Navarro – La Amistad 2011 - £8.88 from Caves de Pyrène

Spain has been rather slow to hop aboard the real wine train, but Alicante winemaker Damien Perez is making enough leftfield wines to make up for it.  This one is made from local variety Rojal and is fermented and aged in amphorae, or tinajas in Spanish.  We usually associate amphorae with archeological digs, as these vessels were used in the ancient world to transport olive oil and wine, but they have begun to find favour again in the natural/real wine movement.

Amistad is a light red wine that you could serve chilled in summer (should it ever arrive) to appreciate its lively, fresh sour cherry fruit.

“The Wild Vineyard” Villalobos Carignan Reserva 2012 - £15.90 from Caves de Pyrène

Just to show that the New World is also getting the hang of this real wine thing, I’ve included this Chilean, new to the Caves portfolio.  Carignan is one of those lowly varieties that gets labelled “workhorse” if it’s lucky.  It was enthusiastically taken up by growers in France’s Languedoc post 2^nd World War, valued for its colour, alcohol and high yields.  This aim-low strategy allied to reliance on industrial viticultural techniques was never going to be a recipe for quality, and Carignan’s reputation suffered as a result.

Chile, however, is home to some wonderful old vine Carignan – these were planted in the 1940s and 50s, which makes them positively prehistoric in the context of Chilean viticulture.  Essentially organic from the word go, the vines have never been subjected to any kind of treatment and have been allowed to grow wild (hence the vineyard name).

Freshness is a hallmark of all the wines that I enjoyed at the fair and this one is no exception, with masses of crunchy blueberry fruit - though I concede blueberries are not a crunchy fruit, it’s more a combination of crunch and blueberry that I’m trying to convey.  There is plenty of body and substance, but also elegance.

If you fancy checking out more of these kinds of wine, you can pay a visit to RAW, which bills itself as an artisan wine fair and will take place in London on 19/20 May.  The Real Wine Fair will be back again in 2014.

O for a beaker full of the warm south...

Etna is Europe's largest volcano and still most definitely active, forever puffing out noxious clouds of sulphurous gases and sending out molten lava flows.

Not, you might think, a prime spot for grape-growing. Yet Etna is home to many vineyards and winemakers, who casually point out lava outcrops which have encroached on their vines.

This is just one of the many surprises awaiting the wine-lover in Sicily. Vines have been grown there for millennia, first brought by those ancient traders the Phoenicians in the 6th-8^th century BC, then added to by successive waves of invaders including Greeks, Romans, Moors and Normans. Even the Brits have left their stamp on the Sicilian wine scene, being responsible for the popularity of the sherry-like fortified wine, Marsala. Its ability to keep without spoiling made it infinitely suitable as a tonic for the Royal Navy on their trips round the Med.

Today, Sicily has as much land under vine than Chile and produces a mind-boggling 11 million litres of wine each year. Along with Puglia, the heel of the boot of Italy, these two regions easily produce more wine than the whole of Australia. Where does it all go you ask? As less than 20% of it ends up in bottle, much of it is destined to be sold anonymously in bulk. And there has long been an invisible trade in deeply-coloured southern reds which have been used to beef up Italian wines from further north.

In recent years, however, Sicilians have been taking more pride in their treasure trove of indigenous grape varieties and the best producers are using them to make wines which are proudly and uniquely Sicilian in flavour.

Try these on for size:

Donnafugata Vigna di Gabri Contessa Entellina 2009 - £18.99 from Haslemere Cellar, Noble Green Wines (Hampton Hill) and slurp.co.uk

You might assume that somewhere as undoubtedly hot as Sicily would struggle to produce elegant white wines, but here's the proof that they can. This is two thirds Ansonica (confusingly also known as Inzolia, as if there aren't enough new grape names to get to grips with) with some Chardonnay. Nutty, mineral flavours and ripe fruit.

Cottanera Barbazzale Rosso 2010 - £10.23 from Astrum Cellars (Mitcham)

This is from the northern flank of Etna, which is cooler and wetter than much of the island – indeed they can get more rain in a year than Surrey. This is a blend of the delightfully-named Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio, who sound as if they could be brothers from a Mafia family. Sniff it and that hint of tobacco leaf might remind you of a red wine from Bordeaux. However the palate has the kind of soft and ripe tannins that you would never find there. The lively red fruit and leafy character make this a wonderfully refreshing food wine.

Fondo Filara Etna Rosso - £10.95 from The Wine Society

Compare and contrast: the same two varieties as the wine above, but this one has seen some oak ageing. It does have a glossy oak sheen on it, but also a delicious liquorice, mineral character. The plush fruit is balanced by a ripe tannic underpinning. Do not attempt to drink without food!

COS Cerasuolo di Vittoria 2008 - £17.49 from Les Caves de Pyrène

Cerasuolo di Vittoria is a traditional blend of two native varieties: Frappato and Nero d'Avola, which complement each other perfectly. Nero d'Avola gives weight and fragrance and the Frappato a distinct sour cherry bite. This is beginning to mature and has a wonderfully laid back feel, with the fruit being given space to evolve and open out.

Planeta Santa Cecilia 2007 - £19.95 from greatwesternwine.co.uk, £21.75 from slurp.co.uk

The Planeta family (yes, a real name, not a made up brand name) have probably done more than any other winemaking family to blaze a trail for quality winemaking in modern era Sicily. This wine, 100% Nero d'Avola, is a great example of a deceptively simple drink – the fruit it bright and clean, it could never be described as heavy bodied, yet it doesn't lack for perfume and flavour. A surprisingly delicate expression of the heat and exoticism of Sicily. If this is a stretch for your wallet, the Planetas are also involved in the wines of the Settesoli co-operative, including their good value brand, Mandrarossa.

In our stop-start summer, a beaker of these wines could be as close as we get to the heat of the warm south this year – enjoy.